Click-fraud is when competitors &/or bots click on the same keywords in your Google Ads campaigns multiple times racking up costs and wasting your Google Ads budget. As this is a fraudulent and dispicable act we have to be vigilant and make sure that our client’s budgets are being used for the sole purpose of gaining leads and return on investment, never being wasted.
We take this very seriously here at Dream Digital as an important element of regular Google Ads account optimisations but ultimately the buck stops with Google Ads. Google claim they have a team of fraud prevention people but why then are we still getting stung?
How Google Prevents Invalid Clicks & Impressions:
Google claims that their specialists carefully monitor clicks and impressions on Google ads in order to protect your interests as well as those of advertisers. To do this, Google use both automated systems and human reviews, analysing all ad clicks and impressions for any invalid traffic that may artificially drive up an advertiser’s costs or a publisher’s earnings.
Google’s proprietary technology analyses clicks and impressions to detect invalid traffic. Their system uses sophisticated filters to distinguish between activity generated through normal use by users and activity that may pose a risk to advertisers, and advertisers are not charged for this activity.
In addition to their automated systems, they have a team dedicated to the detection of invalid activity. The team uses several specialised tools and a wide variety of techniques based on extensive experience tracking and monitoring user behavior and analysing scenarios. They continually upgrade their detection mechanisms to proactively combat invalid activity.
How do any fraudulent clicks get through if this is the case? Ultimately each click makes money for Google, all the more reason for your Google Ads agency manager to be cautious and watchful and it’s worth monitoring.
Here’s what you can do to prevent click fraud:
Do a click fraud check in GA4:
Here you will find a client id list with a client id, number of sessions etc, you can then click into the client ids to check how many Google Ads clicks they have made and in a timeline, alarm bells will ring if you see more than one Google Ads click in any given day or multiple clicks in any given time. If you do see what definitely looks like fraudulent clicks then screen shot the page and send to the Google Ads help team in chat or direct mail. They will investigate and respond within days and notify you that you wont be charged for these fraudulent clicks which you can verify in your account invoice and statement for this time. The fraudulent clicks will be labelled as inactive and a credit will be issued to your account.
You could also check your ad targeting and which campaign is getting the fraudulent clicks, then consider if it would be worth your while to close off all or part of this campaign, as long as you’re not going to shut down good lead generating traffic along with this.
You could look at using fraud click software. There are plethora of fraud click software companies that you could use, and many come recommended, Clickcease, Cheq.ai, Clixtell, to name a few.